The Storm Clouds Are Gathering
by CrazyKat265
Summary: The Winter War is finally over, but as the story goes, Ichigo is now leading a normal life of a teenager in his final year of high school; our favorite Strawberry is no longer a Substitute Soul Reaper. But now, a year and a half later, strange things are occurring in Karakura Town. Murders and disappearances start after a girl falls from the sky; Ichigo's world is changed again.
1. Prologue

Prologue

Blinding white light encased all five of their senses. It pressed into their very being; the explosion seemed to wipe away anything that it touched. The explosion could barely be heard around them, but its immense power could be felt by all of them. The pressure from the blast kept on building and building, it was hard to breath, it was impossible to scream.

Skin felt as if it was being ripped away from bone and then sewn back on in the wrong place. Hair was pulled and clothing was torn. The force of the explosion was pushing at time and space itself, resulting in a terrible tearing noise erupting somewhere, someplace close.

No one could tell what was happening; none of them had ever experienced this before. All they could do was to lose themselves into the overload of painful sensations coursing through their bodies.

Then they were weightless.

And all were pulled away into black space. They felt compressed even more, as if they were being forced down a too small pipe that suctioned them farther away from where they were needed, father away from each other.

They could hear each other sometimes as they were vaulted through this space, crying out to each other to reach someone, anyone.

Suddenly, lights sparked and swirled around each of them; one by one, flinging them further away from each other. Lightning crackled through one figure, and their entire body was illuminated for an instant, every vein, organ, artery, and bone glowed, before black clouds covered the figure and dragged it down, down, down.

The others were gone as well, launched further into the dark abyss.


	2. Chapter 1: Crash Down

After months of no update or whatevers I am back with a new story, which by the way I WILL FINISH! I have been working on this since Febuary and I have gotten some ideas floating around for chapter two!

So later people and enjoy the following 4,649 words :)

... I'm out!

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Now updated with 4,968 words and (hopefully) a little more clearer story line.

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It was staring to drizzle in the small town of Karakura, Japan. The weatherman had promised a rainstorm sometime this week, and of course it had to start raining when a young girl had to stop for groceries after visiting a friend's house for a school project. Her older brother seemed to be always busy and tired all of the time, she guessed it was because he went into high school and was too cool for his little sisters, so she couldn't depend on him to get the groceries today. And she didn't even consider asking her twin sister to get food, knowing her she would only get the kind of food that she liked best leaving everyone else unhappy. Her father was definitely never ever, ever, ever going to get groceries either, EVER. The last time he went grocery shopping he ended up almost in jail for somehow setting the watermelon display on fire. After, he drove through three isles of cleaning supplies and junk food with a scooter that was supposed to be used for old people.

So it was up to the youngest of the four to get something that everyone would like to eat. Tonight's dinner was going to be something special, she wanted to surprise the rest of her family with her best dishes so she needed to get home as quickly as possible.

The young girl walked swiftly on the sidewalk from the grocery store with drops of rain lazily falling from the sky, hurrying to get home before the lazy drops of water started falling faster. The dark clouds gathering in the evening sky didn't look good at all.

The rumbling sound from the sky and the metallic smell of the oncoming storm made the girl pick up her pace even more; she was almost sprinting to beat the storm while the former breeze was clawing at her dirty blonde pigtails and yellow raincoat.

Home was merely a couple of blocks away when she passed the archway entrance to the park in the middle of town. The park was empty; everyone who lived in the area was already holed up inside their homes to keep out of the rain, so no other children were there to play on the playground. The slow and steady drizzle already drenched the plastic and metal playground equipment, the slides and monkey bars were glistening with the drops of water coating their surfaces. The already sharp wind was also picking up faster than before, rattling the chains of the swing sets and urging the young girl on. It was starting to blow so hard that she had to make sure that she kept a good grip on the bags of groceries in her hands to keep them from tumbling out of her grasp.

The small girl sighed frustrated and looked up at the sky again, her eyes widened when she saw a funnel shape forming in the clouds. She knew from school that funnel clouds could form into tornados that could wreck entire towns, but most funnel clouds didn't form with sparks of lightning swirling around them in the span of less than a second. Her eyes widened even more as the funnel cloud twisted itself violently towards the playground she was by; lightning sparked again through the black mass and the whole thing crashed down into the ground, ripping apart the entire play area.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" the girl screamed as she dropped the bags she was holding to cover herself from the flying debris launched into the air by the powerful impact. Suddenly, a metal part from the monkey bars wacked into her small frame, forcing her to the ground. "Ack!"

And just as fast as it started, everything stopped. Besides the rain of course, it was coming down so hard that the little girl could barely see a foot in front of her through the onslaught. She could though, make out through the rain, a tremendous crater cut into the ground from the funnel cloud mass. She wasn't severely injured thank goodness but she could feel cuts and on her face and bruises forming on her back where she was hit by the metal bar.

"Ow, that really hurt!" She groaned sitting up and rubbing her achy head. Her clothes were soaked all the way through and the produce she had just bought was spread out all around her ruined from being dropped onto the ground and from the rain. Sadly, her family wouldn't be getting the delicious meal that she was planning to cook for them.

"Mmmnnnnn…" a painful moan was heard somewhere nearby.

The girl gasped and her head snapped up quickly enough to make her a little dizzy. _What was that noise? _ She thought and then she came to a realization as she looked around. _Was somebody hurt?_

"H-hello? Is anyone there?" She tentatively called out. She gasped again when she heard another noise again; it was coming from inside the crater! The girl crawled to the edge of the gaping hole in the ground to see if there really was someone down in it. Shockingly, a figure was laid out face down in the very bottom of the pit. Gross smelling smoke was wafting off of the body, it almost smelled like meat left too long in the oven.

"Oh n-no!" The short blonde girl choked out. The person stayed completely still, which was not a good sign at all. Was the person dead? Without any thought for her own safety, the small girl swung one leg down over the edge of the crater and slipped down the muddy wall. The odor was a lot stronger up close, the poor girl had a harder time keeping herself from throwing up and tearing up with each shaky step she took. While having her nose covered into the front of her ruined rain jacket, the girl gently put a trembling hand on the person's shoulder and rolled them onto their back.

Lying before her was an older girl, probably just a little bit older than the younger girl's older brother from what could be made out from the singed face. The teenage girl's eyes were moving underneath her eyelids and she groaned out in pain again. The smaller girl kneeled besides the older girl with her eyes widened in amazement and glistening with tears. _How on earth can she still be alive? _ She thought as she rubbed a sleeve across her watery eyes. _I c-can't start c-crying now! _ But from the look of things the girl wouldn't be alive for much longer. She needed treatment for her injuries fast!

Luckily, a very strange coincidence in fact, the little girl's family ran a medical clinic that could help out the girl before she would be transferred to a hospital with better equipment. The only problem was getting the older girl back to the clinic. The young girl couldn't carry her by herself; she needed to call her family. She was sure that someone would help her with the teenager, most likely her older brother. He may be a grumpy meanie sometimes but he would never ignore someone in need.

Carefully the girl climbed up the slippery mud walls of the crater; it was hard not to lose her grip. When she was finally able to drag herself out, the girl ran to where she had dropped her school bag onto the ground when the lightning had hit. She fumbled with the zippers until she had found the right pocket that held her cellphone that her father had made sure that she had with her for emergencies. And this was definitely an emergency. The phone was intact from being inside the secret pocket inside the bag and the little girl quickly dialed her home phone number. The phone rang twice before someone picked it up on the other end.

"I-Ichi-Nii?" The girl sobbed in relief.

"YUZU?! ARE YOU ALRIGHT!?" A stressed out male voice yelled through the speaker.

"I n-need your help!" Yuzu couldn't hold her tears back any longer; her voice cracked as salty tears mixed with rainwater. The voice on the line became quieter on the speaker but it held a very stern tone.

"N-no," Yuzu exclaimed when she could finally speak, "I'm fine! Th-there's a girl t-that n-needs our help!"

"I'm b-by the park a block a-away…"

"P-please, Ichi… H-hurry!"

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**A year and a half earlier:**

"Do you really think it's gonna rain Mizurio?" Asked a long haired brunette boy who was leaning over an open window ledge overlooking the front courtyard of Karakura High School. The window was on the third story of the modern looking building and the boy was almost leaning completely outside trying to look at the darkening sky.

Mizurio, a boy with black short hair that curled slightly at the ends, sighed for the umpteenth time that day and looked up from the math book he was studying. "Like I said before in last period, probably." He went back to the thick book, "Now will you let me study, Mr. Asano? I need to get a good grade on the math test tomorrow."

"Mr. Asano" froze and then spun around on his heel to leap atop Mizurio's desk from the window ledge. "MIZURIO! Stop being so formal! Call me Keigo!" he cried over dramatically. Mizurio just ignored him and set his concentration back to his textbook.

"Mizurio. Muzurio. Mizurio. Mizurio. Mizurio. Mizurio. Mizurio. Mizurio. Mizurio. Mizurio! Mizurio! Mizurio! Mizurio!" Keigo repeated over and over, using his body weight on top of the desk to sway it back and forth with each "Mizurio." Niether the annoying brown haired teen or the annoyed black haired boy noticed that the classroom door was creaking open until, "Keigo' you idiot! What the heck are you doing?!"

"Huh?" Keigo whipped his head around, grinned maniacally and then pounced off of the desk towards the spikey orange haired figure that had just opened the door, "Iiiiiiiiiiichiiiii-GACK!"

The very tall orange haired guy stepped swiftly out of the way, like he's done this every day, and clotheslined Kiego's throat. The shorter boy fell backwards onto the hard floor gagging with his hands at his throat.

"Tch, idiot." The tall boy glared at Keigo twitching on the linoleum and stepped over him. Mizurio looked up once again from his math book and smiled good-naturedly, "Hey, Ichigo."

"Hey Mizurio." Ichigo replied sitting down at his nearby desk.

"Mizurio!" Keigo wailed rolling over and pushing himself up onto his elbows, "Why do you-WHAH!"

And again Keigo met the floor, face first this time.

"Hm?" A skinny petite girl looked down to what her tiny foot had crushed, which was Keigo's back. Her expression was one of the upmost confusion with her having no idea to why on earth Keigo was on the ground beneath her school dress shoe.

"Just ignore the idiot Rukia." Ichigo called out, pulling from his school bag a textbook and a pencil for the last class of the day. The short black haired girl shrugged and went to sit down at her desk by Ichigo.

"Oh fair Rukia~! Why are you so beautiful but so cruel-! Keigo cried from the floor. Rukia giggled and Ichigo rolled his eyes at the idiot writhing on the floor and at the girl sitting right next to him. Mizurio just went back to reading his textbook.

A second later the bell rang and, unfortunately for Keigo, a large crowd of students rushed in for class, not noticing that they were trampling someone underfoot. When everyone else was at their seats and after the tardy bell for class rang, the teacher, a young woman with her long dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail, opened the door.

"Alright class, let's get started!" She exclaimed and then stopped suddenly when her shoe hit Kiego's leg on the floor. She looked down confused and then sighed, her shoulders dropping, "Mister Asano, why are you on the floor?"

"Guuh…" was all that came out of the brunette boy's mouth, he wasn't moving. The teacher sighed exasperatedly and rubbed her eyes behind her glasses. "Does anyone want to take him to the nurse?"

No one offered.

"_Will_ anyone take him to the nurse?"

Again, no answer.

"Fine. Kurosaki, Yasutora, you guys can take him." She decided pointing to both students with the book in her hand.

Ichigo groaned and the boy behind him, well not really a boy, more like a giant muscular Latino man with tanned skin and a mop of dark brown hair, looked stoically indifferent.

"_Now_," The teacher emphasized, now pointing her book at the door, "Please."

Ichigo scoffed and got up out of his desk, "Whatever. Let's go Chad."

"Okay." The huge teenager got up from his seat and walked up to the front of the classroom with Ichigo. Chad picked up the smaller boy off of the floor by the collar of Keigo's white uniform shirt and then slung him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He turned to walk out of the doorway followed by his orange haired friend.

"Dude, I can help carry him." Ichigo offered when they both got out into the hallway. Chad shook his head and spoke revealing his deep voice, "Nah, I got it Ichigo." Ichigo shrugged, "Whatever man, I'll still go with you anyways." Chad only nodded his head and kept walking, leaving Ichigo to trail behind with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his grey uniform dress pants.

Back in the classroom, the teacher started writing on the chalkboard, "Okay everybody, while those two are out doing something good for a change, we are going to start with learning about Shakespeare's early childhood!"

The whole class promptly groaned.

"Now, now people! You need to learn these kinds of things! Your overly technologized generation needs to now culture, not who wears what!" She exclaimed angrily, brandishing her chalk at the students sitting in the front row of desks.

Rukia sighed and rested her cheek onto her hand as the teacher continued jabbering. "Of course when the idiot leaves we start to learn about his favorite writer." She grumbled to herself, blowing at the bang that always seemed to stick to the middle of her face.

o000o000o

** WHAM!**

"OW! What the heck midget!" Ichigo yowled out clutching the side of his head. School had just let out not even fifteen minutes ago having Ichigo waiting outside the front of the Karakura High School building for Rukia like he has done every day after school. And, like every day, Rukia came out later than everyone else, but today she slugged Ichigo on the temple with the side of her book bag for no apparent reason, well to Ichigo anyway.

"You idiot! Where were you!?" The small girl yelled back, stomping a foot on the ground, "You were gone for the rest of class! What if there was another Arrancar or Hollow or…or," her voice dropped considerably as she hissed out, "or another pop quiz!"

"Seriously! Is that all you need me for? Hollow extermination and classwork that you can copy off of?!" Ichigo retorted rubbing his sore temple. Rukia punched him in the arm, _hard_, and replied, "It's not my fault that I don't understand the subjects that they teach in the Real World!"

"Ow! That freakin' hurt Rukia! Stop it!" He grabbed his forearm where her tiny fist bruised his skin. "It's not my fault that I didn't get back to class and that you're too dumb to understand English! Keigo woke up when we got to the nurse's office and he jumped on me! It took just half an hour to pry him off of my leg and every time I tried to step out of the door he would start blubbering!"

Rukia rolled her purplish blue eyes ignoring the "you're too dumb" comment and crossed her arms, "Whatever."

"Besides," Ichigo continued, picking up his school bag to sling it over his shoulder, "If there really was an Arrancar or somethin' in this world my substitute soul reaper badge would alert me."

He started walking down the front concrete steps of the school before he added, "And you would also flip out."

"WHAT!? I DO NOT 'FLIP OUT'!"

He really should've been prepared for the very painful kick to the ankles.

The pair continued to bicker on the entire walk back to Ichigo's home in the residential part of Karakura Town. When they finally stepped passed the small entrance gate before the entrance walkway to the house, the taller of the two was nursing a throbbing head, arm, ankles, and a bloody nose from falling down the stairs of the school entrance thanks to the girl beside him.

"You're a brat, you know." Ichigo growled wiping the drying blood off of his face, "You could've broken my nose!"

"And you could learn to be more respectful towards your friends, stupid!" The tiny girl declared haughtily putting her hands on her hips.

"Whatever dummy…" Ichigo didn't think that his body could take much more arguing so he opened the door, but when he glanced inside, his amber eyes widened largely in surprise and he slammed the door shut a split second before something heavy collided with the wood.

"WAAAAAAAH!" A muffled cry was heard on the other side of the door as something clawed at the door.

"YOU DESERVE THAT OLD MAN!" Ichigo yelled through the door.

"Dad, stop crying! It makes you look stupider than you actually are." A young girl's dry voice called out.

"OHHH KARIN! WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN TO YOUR DEAR OLD PAPA!?"

Karin's voice could be heard angrily yelling at her father, while another much softer little girl's voice reprimanded her sister. Ichigo sighed annoyed and let his head fall against the door with a thump. Rukia was starting to giggle at the family's over dramatic antics so the orange haired boy turned his head against the door towards her and glared only succeeding in making Rukia laugh harder.

Ichigo continued to glare but as Rukia kept laughing she also started to snort though her nose. Ichigo's frown soon cracked into a crooked smirk, now he was trying not to laugh.

When Rukia finally got her breathing under control she looked up at him with her pretty eyes watery from laughing so hard and said, "Your family is so strange."

Ichigo's half smirk was still on his face, "Peh, and you snort like a pig."

Her eyes narrowed playfully and she opened her mouth to retort when someone opened the door in front of them revealing one of Ichigo's little sisters, she had short dark hair and a baseball jersey on with black shorts on.

"Before you two start making out, Yuzu wanted me to tell you that she's gonna start dinner soon." Karin grinned evilly when she saw her brother's blush appear all over his tan complexion.

"K-karin! We're not like that!" Ichigo rushed forward to grab at his sister, but she dashed away quickly enough to evade his grasp. She ran up the stairs laughing hard as her older brother chased after her-

"_So what do you think you're gonna be when you're older?"_

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**About two hours before the storm:**

"Hmm?" The moments that the orange haired teen had thought about previously faded back into his memory. Ichigo was on the flat roof of his high school where he and his friends have eaten lunch for the past two and a half years. He was leaning over the edge of the metal railing of the roof while drinking a juice box, but he removed the straw from his mouth to answer his friend's question, "You mean after I get out of high school?"

"Duh, what d'you think I meant?" Keigo replied, the now short haired brunette was hanging on the railing that Ichigo was leaning against, letting the rest of his body swing back and forth on the railing.

Ichigo huffed, "I don't know…"

He and his friends in the human world were now in their third and final year of high school. The war waged against the Arrancars and the traitor Aizen was completed almost a year and a half ago. If you have absolutely no idea about the story behind the Winter War then this should clear up some confusion. See, for the longest time ever since he could remember, Ichigo had the peculiar ability to see the ghosts of the dead. At first when he was really little he didn't understand the difference between the living and the dead, he couldn't distinguish between the ghosts and the people who were actually alive until he was much older. It wasn't really until after his mother died that he figured out that he could see ghosts. His confusion between the two was part of the reason that his mother was killed.

When Ichigo was nine years old he was a happy boy. He wasn't really tough when he was small, at the dojo he went to there would always be this girl, Tatsuki Arisawa, who would always beat him and make him cry, she would later become his best friend in middle school. But whenever his mother would come back to walk back home with him all of his tears would stop and he would immediately smile. His whole world revolved around his wonderful mother, in fact it seemed that his whole family's world revolved around Masaki Kurosaki. She had a kind face and long wavy light brown hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Masaki would never raise her voice at her children or get angry with her crazy husband. They all loved her deeply.

One night it was storming when Ichigo and his mother were walking back to their home from the dojo, rain was coming down in slick sheets of water unrelenting for the people in traffic and those walking along the sidewalks. When they were passing the overflowing riverbank close to their home, Ichigo saw a girl looking like she was ready to jump into the rushing waters. He immediately let go of his mother's hand and raced to where the girl was ignoring his mother's warning cry for him to stop.

Then he blacked out.

When he woke up there was something heavy lying on top of his body. The poor boy felt familiar arms wrapped around him protectively, but those arms were so very very cold. Masaki's dead body was what lay on her son's smaller trembling frame. She was covered with sticky crimson blood but Ichigo didn't see where the blood came from, he couldn't see though his tears. He was used to blood since his father was the owner of a home clinic that treated nonlife-threatening injuries, but this blood was different.

This was the day when he stopped smiling and grew colder. Every day for a long time after his mother's death he would walk up and down that riverbank searching for something that he could never find again.

Then he eventually grew up and entered Karakura High School. He still blamed himself for his mother's death, but now he could get on with his life. Most of his teacher viewed him as a teenage delinquent because of his rebellious attitude and brightly colored hair, so he kept his grades up to get them off of his case. Sure he would get into fights here and there but all of those fights had something in common, there was someone that he was protecting. He fought alongside Tatsuki and Chad against bullies that preyed on younger kids and sometimes Ichigo's little twin sisters, but Ichigo never felt like he had enough power to protect everyone. That was until a Soul Reaper named Rukia Kuchiki showed up through his bedroom wall and changed his world forever.

She helped save his family from an attack by a hideous monster called a Hollow. Hollows are creatures that were once regular Plus souls that were not lead to the Soul Society by Soul Reapers and eventually became Hollows when their soul chains became unattached and ripped their true selves out. White masks cover their faces to hide the identity of who they once were and a ravenous hunger is inside them to eat other souls, but that hunger is never sated. One way to eradicate a hollow is to kill it with a Zanpakutō, which is a katana sword that Soul Reapers use to cleanse the Hollowfied spirit and to release that spirit along with all of the spirits that the hollow ate. Rukia along with the rest of Ichigo's family was injured because of a Hollow, the only option to save everyone was to thrust her Zanpakutō sword into Ichigo's heart to transfer part of her Soul Reaper Powers.

But instead of only part of her powers, Ichigo absorbed all of her Soul Reaper power.

So for the next two months Rukia trained Ichigo to take over her job as Karakura's Soul Reaper until she regained her powers. Ichigo battled many Hollows and even was defeated by the one that killed his mother but Ichigo's father, who turned out to be an ex-Captain of the Soul Society, killed the Hollow later. Eventually though the Soul Society came for Rukia and was going to execute her for giving her powers to a human boy.

Ichigo and his friends followed her to the Soul Society and rescued her from being executed, but at the same time Sōsuke Aizen a Captain of the Soul Society's Thirteen Court Guards betrayed the Soul Society along with two other Captains Gin Ichimaru and Kaname Tōsen and sided with the Hollows in another world called Hueco Mundo. There Azien made Hollows into having almost Soul Reaper like powers using the device called the Hogyoku transforming them into humanoid Arrancars. Also with it he tried to make a key called the Ōken to get into the Soul Society's dimension where the Royal family lived to overthrow the King and become Ruler. Ichigo along with rest of the Soul Society's Captains and Seated Officers was able to defeat Aizen in the long months of the Winter War.

But the war wasn't won without sacrifice. Ichigo gave up his powers purposefully for the Soul Society to protect everyone he loved.

He could no longer see ghosts, which is originally what he wanted.

"Rukia hasn't visited at all in all of this time," Kiego wan now on the ground laying on his side complaining, "That's pretty cold."

But Ichigo could also no longer see the friends he had made from the Soul Society. Rukia was the last person from that place that he had gotten to say goodbye to. And she faded right before his eyes all those months ago as the very last of his powers diminished.

"She moved on from Karakura, she's not in charge of it anymore." Ichigo replied harshly, "She probably got reassigned to another town or something."

"Do you miss her?" Kiego looked up conspicuously from over his shoulder to Ichigo.

Ichigo had gotten all he had wanted. A completely normal life free of ghosts and Zanpakutōs and blood and death and teeny tiny annoying dark haired Soul Reapers that lived in his closet and mooched off his family after tricking them into letting her live with them and having his family love her like a family member and who may have finally stopped the terrible rain in his heart that had been pouring down on his soul ever since his mother had died.

"Not at all." He said gruffly and shook his head slightly to clear his mind. Ichigo then turned sharply around to walk towards the door that led back into the school from the roof. He didn't like that he sounded like some wimpy sap that had no control over their stupid emotions.

_ Since when am I that cheesy? _He thought, wrenching the metal door open.

Meanwhile above the school oncoming storm clouds rumbled overhead.

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But who doesn't love the cheese?

Whoo chapter one is complete! That only took like months...blerg.

Oh goodness, I hope it wasn't too confusing. -_-

Completed 5:25 p.m. Friday May 16, 2014 on way to a select soccer tournament...

We got second in that tournament. :)

The goal was to post this on the last day of school...

yeah I only missed my deadline by like five days but aw well!

Reviews would be lovely.

Peace out girl scouts.

(4:56 p.m. 6/3/2014)

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Found some editing issues that I missed when I first published -_-

And I also realized that I didn't publish the prologue before the first chapter

right now I'm hitting my head against the wall.

Don't mind me... BANG BANG BANG

(10:04 p.m. 6/3/2014)


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